Chapter 104
The story continues off the page
Floaties for Everyone
Swim lesson at the water park, and she's demonstrating on you
A city brimming with neon, Cyber City.
In this dazzling place that never knew day from night, rain was falling—rarely, of all things.
Not the artificial rain that fell through Axis, but real rain.
Between the skyscrapers soaring high.
A middle-aged man in horn-rimmed glasses watched it through a wall of glass.
His hair was white with gray, and his neatly trimmed beard connected to his sideburns. He was even wearing a tidy brown suit.
Despite his wrinkled appearance, he had a sturdy build. With his hands clasped behind his back, he offered a brief remark.
“I’ve lost track of how many years it’s been.”
The distinctive humidity that artificial rain could never provide. The dusty smell of rain, the tingling chill in the air.
The director of <Afterglow>, Zeke Pulan, liked these things.
Uncontrived naturalness.
That was why Zeke Pulan didn’t even have a single one of those common prosthetics installed, and even when he went on vacation, he traveled to the Rajesta Continent or the Old Murim.
The same philosophy applied to his filmmaking.
His reason for using S.E.L. was the desire to capture emotions that were even more genuine.
The works made through it unquestionably attained an artistic quality on an entirely different level from ordinary films.
The article on the holographic screen visible beyond his glasses was the most beautiful period to the film he had made.
[Breaking news, the lead actors of the film <Afterglow>, James and Nellivayesa, officially acknowledge their relationship.]
The actors who had played out an affair still had feelings for each other after the film ended, and ultimately completed the film.
This was the realism and authenticity he pursued.
Add immersion to immersion.
Turn it into reality.
Though he called himself a film director, even film was only his second-best option.
His first choice was something else.
And only a select few could enjoy it.
Movies were merely supplementary.
The genuine anguish and suffering of the actors created through the film.
S.E.L. was henceforth provided only to the members of Gold Bar, Cyber City’s gathering of wealthy elites.
Everything James and Nellivayesa had felt—the excitement, fear, jealousy, anxiety, guilt, rationalization, and more.
The real <Afterglow>, raw enough to let him feel everything.
But even <Afterglow>, which Zeke Pulan considered his masterpiece, felt lukewarm compared to what he had encountered recently.
Real-time crimes carried out using the fixer named Mosco Vichakos.
The kind of game content shared by Villangsi, one of Gold Bar’s members, had set Zeke Pulan’s inspiration ablaze.
* * *
Lately, I’d found myself looking at news articles about Cyber City more often.
It was because all sorts of incidents had been erupting one after another, starting with the mayoral election to replace AI Axis.
[Breaking news, the lead actors of the film <Afterglow>, James and Nellivayesa, officially acknowledge their relationship.]
[Breaking news, an AllCash cash-in-transit vehicle found by the river. The cash is still inside?!]
[Breaking news, Elik Dwalbe. Attempted assassination of the mayor?! ‘Unshakable, for the city!’ Miraculous survival!]
“These days, whenever things get noisy, it’s always Cyber City.”
I clicked my tongue and stood up.
Seeing articles like these made a person want to smoke.
Clamp!
But Kim Yang, who was sitting beside me, grabbed my wrist and shook his head.
“Ah, sit down.”
“……”
“T-The matchmaking meeting.”
“I told you I know. My head’s just a little muddled. I’ll just go have a cigarette and come back.”
“The b-boss has been acting weird lately.”
“Hmm?”
As I tried to shake him off and leave, Kim Yang sighed and looked at me with concern.
“You c-can’t concentrate.”
“……”
“Because of the kids?”
The children from the cathedral still came by from time to time after that. I would take Renea along to buy them something delicious or let them play games at a PC café, and so on.
I was doing what I could for them, but—.
That didn’t mean I could make the shadows hanging over their faces disappear.
Because in the end, what the children truly wanted was something else.
“Tsk, I was wondering where that woman—their mother—was and what she was doing.”
“W-what if…”
Kim Yang hesitated.
He knew it might be cruel to say, but perhaps he decided it had to be said, because he took a breath.
“What if she abandoned them?”
“……!”
Was there any need to make Kim Yang say something so difficult?
I shrugged and said it, and Kim Yang flinched in surprise before nodding slightly.
Giving up on going out for a cigarette, I sat back down and let out a short sigh.
“That’s not going to happen. The Vichakos I know would never be that kind of person.”
“Why?”
“Huh?”
“W-what’s the reason you believe that?”
“……”
Unexpectedly, I found it difficult to answer.
He had a point.
There wasn’t any particular reason to believe Vichakos would definitely come to get them.
She might have given them the prosthetics as a final farewell, after all.
If anything, that would suit the Mosco Vichakos I knew far better.
She was far too foul-tempered to be a nun raising children.
But.
“……A hunch?”
I just felt like she would.
Like she would definitely come back.
I thought it wouldn’t be convincing, so I tried to force an awkward smile, but—.
“O-okay. Got it.”
Surprisingly, Kim Yang accepted it easily.
Then, watching him resume his work as though it were the most natural thing in the world, I felt strangely ticklish.
‘He trusts me a lot more than I thought.’
I felt good, and I was proud that maybe I’d managed to live a decent life after all.
Feeling awkward for no reason, I opened a random drawer while sitting at my desk.
“Ah.”
A single photograph caught my eye.
A blonde girl.
Smiling brightly.
A white flower in her hand.
It was a photograph I’d happened to find at Vichakos’s cathedral last time.
I’d gathered up all the other children’s pictures, but only this girl’s remained.
‘I’ve never seen a child like this before.’
I’d heard the Sixth-Floor cathedral had originally been overseen by a nun from Mexico named Jimena.
If so, was she a child Jimena had raised?
“No way……”
A face suddenly came to mind.
It looked somewhat similar, at least at a glance.
“I’ve never seen her smile, so I can’t be sure.”
I muttered, flicking the photograph once with my finger.
Wouldn’t the kids know if I showed it to them?
“I should leave work early today.”
“T-That’s not fair.”
If you’re so unhappy, become the boss yourself.
* * *
The sky over rainy Cyber City.
On a skyscraper rooftop, Mosco Vichakos stood with a cigarette in her mouth, staring blankly up at the sky.
Rain that showed no sign of stopping.
Since Axis disappeared, there had been much talk about the climate systems too, so this weather wasn’t being manipulated.
A real monsoon was pouring down on Cyber City.
Beep-beep-beep!
An alert rang from her pocket as she absentmindedly savored her cigarette.
Her irritation surging, she bit down hard on the cigarette filter.
Sighing that they wouldn’t even let her rest for a moment, Vichakos pulled out her terminal.
[Mission Failed!]
Assassinate mayoral candidate Elik Dwalbe!
- Reward: The children’s health.
- Villangsi: Fourth mission failed.
- Villangsi: What a shame?
- Villangsi: Elik Dwalbe’s perfectly fine.
- Villangsi: Hijack the AllCash cash-in-transit vehicle, set fire to the Prophoton factory, defeat Team Stonehammer’s fixer team.
- Villangsi: You succeeded at three in a row, but failed the last one.
- Villangsi: What a pity, what a pity.
“It’s not a failure yet. I can try again.”
Vichakos hurriedly replied, but—.
As though it had read her mind, what came back was mockery.
- Villangsi: Getting desperate?
- Villangsi: Let me ask you one thing.
- Villangsi: Why are you going this far?
“……”
- Villangsi: Honestly, I thought you’d give up halfway through.
- Villangsi: They’re just brats, aren’t they?
“Stop spouting useless nonsense. I told you I can do it again. This time, right into that bastard’s head—.”
- Villangsi: No.
- Villangsi: It’s the most important thing.
- Villangsi: Answer me.
The pressure was blatant.
Vichakos clenched her teeth as she stared at the green terminal screen, raindrops plopping onto it, and answered.
“Because the contract is still valid.”
- Villangsi: A contract?
“I’m a fixer. I work for whatever price I receive. I’m taking care of the kids because of the contract.”
- Villangsi: With whom?
“……”
- Villangsi: Aren’t you going to answer?
Whoosh—.
Exhaling the cigarette smoke lingering in her mouth like an afterglow, Vichakos issued a quiet warning.
“You, and whoever the hell is enjoying this. I’ll kill every last one of you.”
- Villangsi: Hahahahahahahaha
- Villangsi: Cute.
- Villangsi: I get it, but you still have to answer, right?
“Sister Jimena.”
There was no answer.
She wondered if the terminal had frozen, but after enough time for someone to catch their breath—.
- Villangsi: Third Floor, from Mexico.
- Villangsi: Jimena Martinez Lopez.
- Villangsi: Died at sixty-seven.
- Villangsi: Was this a request from a dead woman?
The speed with which Villangsi dug up information on Jimena sent chills down her spine.
She had sensed it ever since the assassination attempt on the mayoral candidate, but there was no doubt she had become the puppet of an absurdly vast game.
- Villangsi: Mexico disappeared in the Interfloor War, right?
- Villangsi: She lost her homeland, wandered from place to place, and finally died alone in a foreign land—is that the story?
“……”
- Villangsi: Okay.
- Villangsi: This melodrama is getting boring.
The terminal screen lit up.
It went dark, and what appeared next was a cathedral building on the Third Floor.
- Villangsi: Since you failed the mission.
- Villangsi: You have to pay the price, right?
Vichakos’s eyes flew wide, as if they would split apart.
A building she had never seen.
A place with exactly the features of the one Sister Jimena had described as if reading from a children’s storybook.
A landscape she had laughingly said as a child that she wanted to visit someday.
But she couldn’t simply welcome it now.
“Don’t—!”
Despite her desperate shout, the screen moved steadily toward the cathedral.
The first-person view was a sort of courtesy, letting her watch the horrible tragedy that would soon arrive from the closest possible vantage.
- Villangsi: Just one person. I’ll only pull out an arm.
- Villangsi: We’re a group of people who came together because we want to see you succeed.
“I said don’t!”
No matter how desperately she shouted, no one answered, and just as the being on the other side of the terminal reached out without hesitation to fling open the cathedral doors—.
- Huh?
What came from the screen was a voice she didn’t welcome at all, but could never forget.
Kim Juseon’s face filled the terminal—the man who had been walking out of the cathedral with a cigarette in his mouth.
“Kim Juseon?”
The assassin in the terminal was facing him directly.
Juseon took the cigarette from his mouth and said:
- Did you come to pray?
The terminal view dipped down, then rose again.
It nodded.
But Juseon smiled and didn’t move aside.
- Ah, I know why you came.
- You’re still unmarried, aren’t you?
- I’m in this line of work.
The business card he held out had a completely different design from Meracle’s original ones.
<We’ll find your miracle in countless worlds.>
Hunter-specialized matchmaking agency, Meracle.
- At a glance, you came because you’re worried about marriage. For something like this, you need to look at it practically rather than pray to the Lord, you know?
- You’re from Cyber City, right? Come with me, and let’s talk over coffee.
Just as Juseon smiled and tried to lead the assassin outside, the view shook.
The assassin swung a fist, sending it straight toward Juseon, but—.
The one who went tumbling across the floor and out of the cathedral was none other than the assassin.
- I said let’s talk outside.
Juseon walked out of the cathedral on the terminal screen, a cigarette between his lips, and sighed.
- The kids are praying.